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Homemade Tomato Trellises

Since we love homemade ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and salsa (okay, well I love salsa anyway), tomatoes have become one of our favorite garden plants. It's so nice having some garden tomatoes in the freezer to cook with all winter long--say, for some good Italian or Mexican food.

Since we use lots and lots of tomatoes, it means we must also grow lots and lots of tomatoes. Growing so many tomato plants, we have always been presented with the problem of what to use for cages or trellises. You see, tomato plants can grow to be quite large and heavy, which means that if you have no support for your plants, the fruits will wind up developing on the ground--leading to rotting, slug infested tomatoes! There is nothing more disappointing than having to throw away half of your tomato harvest because pests got to them.

Tomato plants that are kept up off the ground typically have better yields, less instance of disease and pest infestation, and are easier to harvest, so we definitely want to use some kind of cage or trellis on our tomato plants, but the problem that we have always faced is cost. We are a frugal family...okay, we're cheap. We needed something that can be reused year after year, is easy to set up, and has a minimal cost.

Besides the money factor, we haven't been pleased with the quality of commercially made products recently--they seem flimsy, prone to breakage, and are not long-lasting or durable. Yes, you can buy a tomato cage at a big-box store for around $2.50 a piece, but if you need 48 of them, that still comes to $120 dollars. Now, I would almost say the cost would be worth it if you could reuse them year after year, but these trellises likely will not last you that long. They will get rusty and bent, and will need to be replaced frequently. In addition, these cages are generally rather flimsy, and will not stay standing on windy days.

So, my crafty husband did some research, and finally came up with a plan:

A head-on view of the trellises.

He pounded a post into the ground at each end of a row of tomatoes. The posts are anchored on one side:

I think those black things on the twine are called turnbuckles. They allow you to adjust the tension of the twine or something. I'm only guessing here.

A loop of twine spanning the length of the row is wrapped around each post. The twine loop is help apart by wooden spacers:

I don't know how I managed to take a picture of my foot.

You can go up higher than two levels of twine if needed--I think that was just kind of a starting point. I'm sure the tomatoes will get taller than that.

The twine will support the tomato plants, keeping the fruit off the ground.

I was very impressed with the trellises my husband built--but I'm impressed by all the things he builds, he's such a handy guy! You can see a couple wider shots of our garden here (and see some of the other trellises he has built in the past:

To avoid clogging and bad odors, sink and tub drains should be periodically cleaned.

A once a month cleaning with a non-toxic, homemade cleaner prevents needing a stronger, usually sodium hydroxide (lye) based, cleaner to remove clogs. Sodium hydroxide is extremely caustic, and will damage the lungs if inhaled, burn skin and eyes, and can be fatal if swallowed. In addition, the heat generated by using sodium hydroxide can soften PVC pipes, and damage old, corroded pipes. It also changes the pH of water and can cause fish kills.

A much nicer alternative to this harsh chemical is the simple combination of baking soda and vinegar, followed with boiling water. When baking soda and vinegar are combined, they foam and expand, cleaning the sides of your pipes and dissolving fatty acids. The boiling water then washes it all away. This method is a great way to use up the box of baking soda in your frig that is not longer doing a good job of deodorizing.

Every little thing you do helps and the small things really do add up. Which is why I have a somewhat creepy tub of soap scraps in my bathroom.

I admit, it seems a little weird to save soap scraps, but it wasn't always this way. In fact, they used to have little contraptions for saving your soap scraps.

But those days are gone. Or are they?

I think frugality is making a comeback--at least, it is around here, because I save all our soap scraps. What do I do with them?

Recycled Soap Scrap Bars

If you are regular users of bar soap, a family of four can easily manage to get six additional bars of soap per year by saving soap scraps. It doesn't seem like much, so I'll write it this way instead: in ten years, that would be 60 bars of "free" soap. There, that seems more impressive.

Ingredients:
Soap scraps
Water
Herbs (optional)

1. Grate or finely chop soap scraps. Measure the amount you end up wi…